Blue Valentine

Straddling two timelines that tell the tale of an entire start-to-finish romantic relationship with enough passion and honesty to fill the cinematic space between, Blue Valentine is a heartbreaking ode to love and loss. And close-ups, too, since creative, courageous director Derek Cianfrance unveils his story with a commitment to claustrophobic composition. Actors Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are Dean and Cindy, whose separate lives are on a collision course, and their two brilliant performances are captured with such authenticity that Cianfrance's fascination with tight shots almost feels like an invasion of privacy.

The camera forces its way into every moment of intimacy or frustration, capturing the raw emotions with a clarity that is expertly juxtaposed against the grainy photography. Gosling and Williams deliver much of their performances with the camera clinging to their faces, the frame filled with every facial detail a human being can provide. This approach allows the lead performers to expose incredible intricacies in their characters and it locks them into the central position within the narrative. There is no place for Dean or Cindy to escape, which only intensifies the ups and downs of their onscreen relationship.

Cianfrance's decision to expose such emotion through constriction of physical space and performance geography is integral to the success of this love story, which is then taken to an additionally lofty level by the dedication of Gosling and Williams. As a pair, they redefine contemporary standards for cinematic chemistry. When they embrace or look longingly at each other or engage in a quirky act, it feels as though we are witnessing two people falling in love, as opposed to two actors pretending. It's a brutally beautiful display of acting prowess, two grand performances capturing each high and low of their characters with heartfelt honesty.

The conflict that both connects them and divides them is then a believable driving force of the narrative, because the romance at stake is so achingly real. The threat of it falling apart is harrowing and horrible and this pulls us deeper into the drama. The performances are so strong that it becomes a natural reaction to root for Dean and Cindy, even though the fractured chronology and paralleling timelines remind us that this relationship has an inevitable expiration date. Dean and Cindy can't escape their fate and so neither can we.

The approaching eclipse of their relationship is devastating in its life-altering implications, but Cianfrance's decision to mix and meld the past and present timelines ensures that the movie is more than just a downward spiral. It's a constant teeter-totter of emotion, a leap for the heavens, followed by a plunge into hell. Blue Valentine carries its burden quite sadly at times, but it celebrates the joys of new love in almost the same breath as it wallows in the collapse of the irreparable relationship. This complexity of emotion matches the nuances of Gosling and Williams, creating a solemnly symbiotic connection between the various pieces of the movie.

There are many themes at work in Blue Valentine, but one of the most exquisitely explored is time. By splitting the movie into past and present and then mashing the two together, Cianfrance is able to extract intense emotion from the story by causing one moment (happy from the past or sad from the present, not that any of it is that simple) to ricochet off another. The effect is a constant reverberation between timelines, each affecting the other. When Dean books a night away from their home and their lovable child Frankie (Faith Wladyka) in a "cheesy sex motel" (Cindy's words), he selects the Future Room, which proves to be something out of a grimy Star Trek spoof.

Since Dean sees this night out with his almost estranged wife as an opportunity to reconnect, the Future Room takes on new meaning. Suddenly, there's the introduction of a new, fully metaphorical timeline, through which the movie begins to really plumb the depths of its pain. By dissecting the past, present, and future as experienced by Dean and Cindy, Blue Valentine reveals a bleak truth about the impossibility of fixing every threatening problem and the implausibility of believing it can be done. But at the same time, this isn't just a story of loss, but rather that rare tale of an entire relationship, both blossoming and withering before our eyes.

To tell this story, Cianfrance has wisely selected two actors of astonishing ability. Gosling and Williams dominate the screen with their often quiet performances, each complementing the other in dramatically meaningful fashion. They navigate the treacherous territory together, hand in hand, even as their characters are drifting apart. Their moments of shared love are so magnificent that the opposite moments punctuated by anger and helplessness register with chilling significance. Giving us a reason to care at every turn, their performances represent exceptional accomplishments. And for all the things I love about Blue Valentine, perhaps the following praise sums it up best.

At one point in the movie, Dean stares just past the camera at what we later discover is Cindy (his first glimpse of her, a sudden birth of love at first sight). He looks longingly at her, drinking in her beauty, falling for her instantly. And then we cut to a shot of Cindy staring back, the eyelines masterfully matched between shots, except this moment takes place in the present, while Dean's stare exists in the past. Cindy is looking back at Dean across a void, combining the timelines with touching poignancy. But Dean is staring at his future with all the hope and optimism that his eventual wife represents, while Cindy is surveying her past from the point of no return, aware of where this is all headed. This minimalist moment, a mere exchange of looks, is one of the most moving cinematic statements about love I have seen in a very long time. It captures the spirit of the movie and the magic of Dean and Cindy's love story. It gives us the past and present colliding in a simultaneous hello and goodbye, with one moment to lift us up and another to break us down.